Other Parts Discussed in Thread: MSP-FET
What is the difference between the following two products
http://www.ti.com/tool/MSP-FET
http://www.ti.com/tool/TMDSEMU110-U
The "marketing language" on both pages is really hard to understand.
One of my junior engineers "grew up" using the XDS, but an older engineer uses the FET. I can't decide which we should use. Can anyone clarify how they are different?
I think the biggest difference is that the MSP-FET is primarily a programmer while the XDS is a debug tool. I use the MSP-FET and it's really just a 14-pin JTAG programmer. It has the following signals available:
This has been useful for programming a launchpad board and supporting UART communication. However, it does not support additional debug probes.
The XDS seems to offer a good deal of flexibility for debugging across a range of boards (multiple wiring/adapter options) but it doesn't support the one I use (MSP430) and I'm not sure that it offers JTAG functionality for flashing code to the embedded target. One nice thing about the MSP-FET is that it does not require CCS which is good for me because I use a command line build via the MSP Standalone Debug Stack.
Overall it depends on which board you're working with (make sure it's supported) and what kind of debug signals you need.
**Attention** This is a public forum
